Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings Commissioner Fidel Del Valle has apologized for his profane outburst directed at a cop and is taking a medical leave of absence. (nyc.gov)

The city’s top administrative judge apologized for his vulgar tirade at City Hall police officers and blamed the outburst on stress due to family medical troubles, Mayor de Blasio said Wednesday.

Advertisement

Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings Commissioner Fidel Del Valle — whose volcanic temper tantrum was first reported by the Daily News — asked for a medical leave of absence to deal with those problems in a letter to City Hall Wednesday.

That comes after he was summoned to Gracie Mansion Tuesday night to explain himself to Hizzoner, who said he’s known Del Valle for “a long, long time” but has never seen any similar behavior.

“I asked him, you know, how this possibly could have happened, and what came out in those conversations was there's a very profound family medical crisis going on, and we talked it through and came to the conclusion that it's time for him to take a leave to just deal with that situation,” de Blasio said. “It is a profoundly difficult situation to focus on that, and I think that unfortunately was the underlying reality.”

Del Valle was caught on a police body camera dropping dozens of obscenities on Officer Lissette Torres-Ocasio who asked him for identification as he entered the gates of City Hall last month for a Puerto Rican Heritage Day event.

“Listen babe, I don’t give a f---! Do you know who I am?” the 69-year-old Del Valle howled at the officer at the start of his expletive-laden explosion in November. “Who the f--- do you think you are?”

Police Commissioner James O’Neill later told The News that he’d reviewed the video and found Del Valle’s conduct “egregious.” De Blasio, who also has finally reviewed the video, said Del Valle shouldn’t have taken out his feelings on the officers.

"It should never — he should never have taken out those frustrations and that pain on those officers, but we understand sometimes that happens with human beings,” de Blasio said. “He is apologizing to both of those officers, who handled the situation with tremendous dignity and professionalism.”

“They did not deserve to be put through that, that was wrong, that should never happen from anyone, public servant or everyday New Yorker,” de Blasio added. “But knowing that there is an underlying reality which is very difficult and painful, I think the leave is the appropriate course of action."

Later on Wednesday, Del Valle released a letter of apology to Torres-Ocasio and another cop, Luc Vaval, who was also working City Hall security at the time.

Advertisement

“I have firsthand knowledge of how hard your job is and I did not make it easier,” he wrote. “So it is especially important to me that I express my sincere apologies for my behavior and I regret that I did not offer this apology to you that night.”

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association was not impressed, and renewed its call to for the judge to be fired.

“A man of Commissioner Del Valle’s extreme ego, temperament and poor judgment should not be allowed to continue in a position of such importance. He spewed a tirade of insults and threats at two NYC police officers who were doing their job properly at the gates of City Hall. That cannot go unpunished,” PBA President Patrick Lynch said.